Why I don’t need to go on the SQLCruise

Brent Ozar (Blog|Twitter) and Tim Ford (Blog|Twitter) are putting on a new type of event in the month of August after SQL Saturday #40 in South Florida July, 31st, properly named SQLCruise. The concept is great, at least in my opinion, you pay for a cruise, get to have a break, and at the same time attend a mini-conference on SQL Server with training provided by two great speakers. The cost is relatively affordable, so what could possibly make it better? How about a sponsor offering up a free room for two, and admission into the mini-conference for free! That’s right Peter Shire (Twitter) and the folks over at SQL Sentry created a contest titled “Why I need to go on the SQLCruise” that is open to anyone to enter. All you have to do is tell SQL Sentry why you need to go the cruise through a creative use of social media, and you could win.

When I first heard about the SQLCruise, I thought, this could be fun, and my wife could come to boot. However, finances being what they are, it just didn’t work out to be feasible for both of us to go, and there is no way I can justify to myself, let alone my wife, me going on a cruise by myself. So when the contest came out, we both got creative and came up with a couple of funny parody type scenarios for why we need to go on the cruise. However, tonight Matt Velic (Twitter) posted his entry into the contest, and it really made me rethink submitting my own entry. Matt’s entry is below:

After watching Matt’s entry it really made it clear that I don’t need to go on SQLCruise, at least maybe not as much as some other people in the community. Trusting that Matt’s entry is entirely true, he does need to go on SQLCruise, so rather than posting my own entries into the contest, I figured I’d use my entry to maybe give Matt a bump. Having read the rules to the contest, this doesn’t even fit into the grey area for possibly being considered as an entry. However, the point behind Social Media is for messages to spread, at least I think that is what its all about, so I am going to spread Matt’s message for why he should go on SQLCruise. Even if I won making a legitimate entry, there’s no way I could in good spirit attend for primarily fun, when someone else really needs to go.